Till the Fence Comes Down

Beside the barn, a pair of horses watch

a dozen anvil-blue barn swallows graze

the shaggy pasture grass for horse flies.

Their feathers flicker in the dragging light

as, one by one, they swerve and leap and loop

across the field like split-tailed sparks emit-

ted from a welder’s torch. Yet it’s the grass

the horses hanker for, the sweet, tall grass

fenced off these many weeks. As dusk settles,

the swallows arc back to their pellet nests

below the eaves, leaving the horses in

the gloam. I wouldn’t tell them if I could,

that the grass is being kept for them. I want

to see their faces when the fence comes down.

“Till the Fence Comes Down” was just published in the spring issue of Third Wednesday. Workshopping the poem not long ago, a friend of mine called it “eschatological,” which I suppose it is. I present it to you on this final Sunday of Lent, the dawn of Holy Week, the beginning of the end of a good, long wait.

Pax,

C